“His Muse (it cannot be denied, and without this we cannot explain its character at all) is a levelling one. It proceeds on a principle of equality and strives to reduce all things to the same standard.” William Hazlitt’s insight into Wordsworth’s poetry has endured and been frequently repeated. But readers and critics of Wordsworth have been far from leveling in their appraisal of and … Continue reading 246. Wordsworth’s leveling muse

Stendhal’s romanticism has been described by Erich Auerbach in terms of “atmosphere,” a unifying relation of place, person, and time that we find in the works of Walter Scott and the medievalism of Coleridge and Keats; it is in fact a new conception of history, a sense that different peoples breath different atmospheres and are formed by the air that they breathe. Describing Balzac, with … Continue reading 245. Stendhal’s Romanticism

Stendhal’s narration is a perpetual mystery of European literature; it goes hand in hand with his characterization (as narration usually does). How might the mystery be approached? Here, as a touchstone, is an example, from the end of Chapter 15, “The Cockrow,” immediately after Julien has first seduced Madame de Renal: Some hours later, when Julien emerged from Madame de Renal’s room, one might … Continue reading 244. Stendhal’s Narration

Kafka’s The Trial revolves around the parable of the law; it is the hermeneutic puzzle that promises to be a key to the larger work, though no doubt others have approached the situation conversely, whereby the larger puzzle of the novel is the key for the parable. Whether or not it is appropriate to handle a puzzle as if it were a key, it demands scrutiny: … Continue reading 243. (Franz Kafka)

The conundrum of Auden’s poetry—the conundrum of how to compare its aims and achievements to those of his contemporaries and to earlier poets—consists of several parts and is best sustained by a comparison to Yeats and also to French verse. The parts in brief: 1) Auden’s sense of history is flat: the past is not absorbed into his poems as a foreign element, as alien … Continue reading 242. (W.H. Auden)

A friend of mine pointed out that semi-recent posts on decorum are a bit of a muddle and that I could have clarified more of what I meant by Arnold’s Platonism. The two are related, and I will explain how here. The post was written as a letter to a friend, but who wants to receive as dry and explicatory a letter as this: A … Continue reading 241. (Davie, Auerbach, Arnold)

To understand a work by Kafka, only a comparison with another work by Kafka will suffice. To make sense of what is most original and distinct in The Castle, what makes it the most thoroughly realized expression of Kafka’s imagination, even though it is incomplete, it is necessary to compare it to The Trial. Both works are about characters who are not so much in … Continue reading 240. (Franz Kafka)